


descendants who boast

by elumish



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Child Acquisition, Alternate Universes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, not kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 19:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10748073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: When the girl lands face-first on the transporter pad, her nose impacting Jim’s shoe in a way that definitely hurts her more than it hurts him, he doesn’t pay much attention to what she’s wearing.





	descendants who boast

When the girl lands face-first on the transporter pad, her nose impacting Jim’s shoe in a way that definitely hurts her more than it hurts him, he doesn’t pay much attention to what she’s wearing. They literally just beamed up from a remarkably successful First Contact mission, and this girl somehow managed to end up beamed up with them despite the fact that she definitely hadn’t been on the ground with them.

He hears someone calling for Bones over as he crouches down next to the girl, turning her over and checking her pulse. He can _feel_ Spock hovering in that anxious way he pretends is stoic regard for his captain’s safety, but he ignores it in favor of checking her over for wounds. There aren’t any obvious ones besides what will likely be a nasty bruise across her cheek, though when he pushes her hair out of the way he finds—

“Vulcan.” Now he looks up at Spock, who looks as surprised as he ever looks, brow slightly furrowed, eyebrows a little raised. Jim can’t blame him for his shock; the kids on New Vulcan are basically sequestered, so there’s no way one who’s sixteen at the oldest should be in the outskirts of the ass-end of the universe.

The girl’s eyes open just as Bones skitters into the room, and they fix, reassuringly lucid, on his face. And then she mutters, “Fuck,” and passes out again.

Which, admittedly, is less reassuring.

Because Vulcans—as far as Jim is aware—don’t swear. And that coupled with the fact that she’s across the universe from where she’s supposed to be, apparently unescorted, means something went horribly wrong. He only hopes there aren’t more kids out here like this.

Jim lets Spock skip the debrief—or, rather, postpone his portion of it—to keep an eye on the kid, because he knows Spock is feeling protective over evidence of another living Vulcan kid. They got as many kids out as they could, but it’s still nowhere near enough, and their refusal to interbreed makes reproduction that way virtually impossible. So finding a kid is important.

He tells Spock to notify him when the kid wakes up, which makes the message he receives as soon as he leaves the debrief that she’s not awake but Bones (referred to properly as Dr. McCoy) and Spock need to see him a bit concerning. What’s more concerning is the look Bones shoots him before ordering both of them to take a seat in his office. Jim sits. Spock doesn’t. Nobody is surprised.

Bones stares at Jim for a minute, then sighs, slouching back in his chair. “We have an issue with the girl.”

“Is she hurt?” Jim hadn’t seen anything, but he could have missed something.

“Nothing more than a couple bruises, and it’s a good thing, too, because if she needed blood I have no idea what we’d do.”

Jim frowns at that. “Can’t we produce Vulcan blood?” All medical replicators should be able to produce at least all Federation species blood.

“Yeah, well, that’s the problem. Best I can tell, she’s only part-Vulcan. The rest seems to be human. I’m running her blood to try to get more details, but the only reference point we have is the hobgoblin over there, so I’m not sure how much we’ll find.”

“There is,” Spock says, then stops. He looks what Jim can only term as uncomfortable, which is a deeply disturbing look on him. “There is a possibility that the High Council will not allow her entrance into Vulcan society.”

Jim gapes at him. “What do you mean?”

Spock’s back straightens even more. “The High Council is, understandably, concerned with maintaining the purity of Vulcan culture and society so that it may be preserved. And she is, from the brief encounter, not trained in the Vulcan way of life, and as any children she would bare would not be fully Vulcan—”

“Hold it right there.” Bones’s face is a dull, almost apoplectic, red. “Are you saying—”

“I am merely warning you of the likely opinion of the High Council. Were my counterpart still alive, I would entreat him to intervene on her behalf, but as he is not, I cannot.”

Jim takes a deep breath and shoves his temper _way_ down. “Let’s just wait until she wakes up and we get a chance to talk to her before we start making any decisions on her behalf. We don’t even know if she wants to go to New Vulcan.”

Bones takes a second, then settles back in his chair. “There is the other issue.”

“The other issue?”

“Yeah,” Bones says a little snidely, “the issue of her wearing a Starfleet uniform.”

Jim blinks at him. “What?”

“You didn’t notice? She’s in a Starfleet Science uniform.”

“Shit.” Jim scrapes his hand across his face. “Okay. Spock, are there any other part-Vulcans in Starfleet?”

Spock stares at him. “There are no other part-Vulcans anywhere, that I am aware of, barring the one now on the _Enterprise_.”

“Another thing to ask her about when she wakes up, I guess.”

The girl wakes up at 0320, and Jim takes a minute before heaving himself out of bed to think about how miserable his shift is going to be. But finding out what the hell is going on is more important than sleep.

Spock and Bones both beat him there, though that’s because Spock is a Vulcan and Jim is pretty sure Bones sleeps in his office. He’s checking the girl over with a tricorder, and Spock is just standing there stoically when Jim walks in.

The girl looks wide-eyed and a little shocked, showing more emotion than Jim has ever seen on a Vulcan’s face. He gives her a smile. “How are you feeling?”

She starts like she wasn’t expecting him to say anything, and then she says, carefully, “I’m fine.”

“That’s good. You want to tell me what happened?”

“I’m Sammie.”

That is not what Jim expected her to say, not least of which because it’s very much not a Vulcan name. And it’s not really an answer, either, but she looks like she could be in shock, so he’s not all that surprised. “That’s good to know. Can you tell me how you got to Viren?”

“Viren?” She frowns suddenly. “What’s the stardate?”

“2265.12,” Spock tells her.

Her frown deepens. “I should be around by now, then. I’m surprised I’m not here. Actually, I’m surprised I’m not _here_. From what I always heard, I spent most of 2265 in the sick bay.”

Bones’s face settles into a dull red. “What,” he demands, “are you talking about?”

The girl’s mouth twists, and she seems to be trying to figure out how to answer. And then, finally, she says, “My name is S’chn T’gai Samantha Amanda Kirk.”

Jim knows he’s gaping at her, but that’s mild compared to Spock, who takes a step towards her and snaps, “That is impossible.”

“Run my DNA against yours.” She leans her head back. “2265. Shit.”

“That’s—” Jim sounds a little hoarse, and he clears his throat. “Let’s say we believe you. How did you end up here?”

To his surprise, it’s Spock who murmurs, “Alternate universe,” sounding almost like he’s talking to himself.

The girl—Sammie—nods. “That’s my assumption too, sa-me—uh, Commander.” From both her expression and Spock’s, she had started to say something she shouldn’t have. She sighs. “Where I’m from, it’s 2281. I was raised on the _USS Expertise_. I—Scotty did all the calculations for this, but I don’t think he meant to send me to another time _or_ another universe. I don’t know. None of us have gotten a lot of sleep in the last…month.” Her mouth twists again, like she’s holding words in.

“Well, then,” Jim says, sounding a lot brighter than he feels, “we need to figure out how to send you home.”

She shakes her head. “You can’t.”

“Kiddo, I’m sure your parents,” which apparently include alternate-Jim, “are missing you and want you home. No matter if you had a fight with them, or—”

“No.” She shakes her head again, more emphatically this time. “It’s not that. It’s, uh…the reason Scotty was trying to get me off the _Enterprise_ was…a month ago, after visiting an uninhabited planet, Dad got sick. It took a couple days to realize it, because sa-mekh was affected too, and by the time we figured out how bad it was, most of the ship was sick, and we were stranded in the middle of space. Dad died a week ago, and the bond snapping on top of how sick he was, sa-mekh died an hour later. So you can’t send me back. They’re all dead.”

Bones starts swearing under his breath, whipping out his tricorder and scanning her again. “You could have infected all of us.”

She shakes her head but takes the fussing passively. “I’m not sick. I’m not even a carrier. It’s the only health benefit my genetic status ever afforded me.” She turns an almost-smile on Jim. “Apparently some of your allergies are hereditary.”

Jim’s breath catches at the thought—and at the thought that this girl is his _daughter_ —but before he can say anything Spock demands, “How would your genetics afford you a medical advantage mine did not afford me?”

“Because of Dad, we think. Some combination of antibodies that were passed down by him that your mother wouldn’t have had, combined with the immunity I picked up growing up in space and the stronger immune system provided by my Vulcan heritage. Anyway.” She shrugs. “I’m fine. I just can’t go home.”

Jim opens his mouth to say something in response to that, but nothing comes out, so he closes it again. Finally, he manages to say, “Bones, run her DNA for a familial match. Spock, with me.”

He manages to get to keep everything in until he gets to the nearest conference room, and then he turns to Spock and bursts out, “So, alternate future me had a kid with a Vulcan, why are you freaking out?”

“If the girl is speaking the truth, she is not only your child. She is also mine.” Jim gapes at him. “She identified herself with my family name, and she referred to me as sa-mekh. Father.”

“She—” Jim sits down in the nearest chair, which tries to skitter out from under him, which feels like how the rest of the day is going, too. “You’re saying she’s both of our kid?”

Spock’s eyes narrow slightly. “If she was truthful in her statements.”

Jim waves that away with a twitch of his hand. “Yeah, yeah, assuming she’s telling the truth. Fuck. If we can’t send her back, what are we supposed to do? Other-you is gone, so we can’t pawn her off on him. I don’t suppose we can give her to your dad.” Before Spock can answer, Jim shakes his head. “Ugh, listen to me, talking about just handing her off to the nearest convenient person. But we can’t just keep her on the _Enterprise_.”

“I do not see why not. She indicated she was raised on the _Enterprise_ , and there is precedent for having a person who is under Starfleet’s age of majority on the ship.”

“Who?”

“Ensign Chekov.”

Right. He’s a real adult now, and Jim had forgotten that he had been seventeen during that first mission. “I’m surprised that you would be advocating to keep a kid on the ship, given that they tend towards illogical thought and irrational behavior. Even, it seems, your kid.”

Spock’s lips press together, and he looks almost uncomfortable. “Before her appearance,” he says slowly, “I had been of the belief that my being a genetic hybrid had rendered me sterile. As such, I find myself…unwilling to allow her to be raised by another when I am capable of raising her myself.”

“Oh.” Jim had never really thought about that, about the fact that Spock probably wouldn’t be able to have kids. Kids just aren’t a thing he thinks about, most of the time, in part a defense mechanism to avoid thinking about his own shit childhood. “Yeah. Okay. We can—Bones needs to confirm that she is actually who she says she is, and we need to talk to her, because I’m not willing to keep her here if she wants off of here. It’s too dangerous to keep an unwilling teenager on it.”

Spock hesitates for a moment, then inclines his head slightly. “I agree, though if she is our child—”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Yes, Captain.”

\--

The girl—and Jim is having a really hard time thinking of her as Sammie or frankly anything else—is asleep when they get back, and before Jim even has a chance to ask, Bones says, “She passed out as soon as you left, after having a panic attack. I’m running the DNA a second time, just to make sure, but…she’s your kid.”

Jim sits down. There isn’t a chair nearby, but he manages to land on the side of a bed. “Shit.”

“No kidding. What are you going to do?”

“When she wakes up, we’re going to ask her what she wants to do. And we’ll go from there.”

“Jim.”

“Bones?”

“She’s both of your kid.”

Jim very pointedly doesn’t look at Spock. “I know that. But I’m the Captain of this ship, and if she decides to stay on this ship I’m the one who’s going to be ultimately responsible for her.” Finally, he glances vaguely in Spock’s direction. “Spock, can you stay here until the shift starts? I don’t want her to wake up alone, but I need to get some sleep if I’m going to be at all useful during alpha shift.”

Spock inclines his head. “Of course, Captain.”

“Great.” Jim stands up and heads out of the sick bay, pretending he’s not running away because James T. Kirk doesn’t run away.

The girl wakes up again during alpha shift, and Jim relinquishes the conn to Sulu before heading to the infirmary. He knows everyone is curious about who she is, but he doesn’t want it getting out until he’s had a chance to talk to her again.

Bones leaves them alone when he gets there, and he sits down in the chair next to her bed. She looks desperately uncertain, and his heart hurts a little seeing that, no matter how else he feels about her. And he’s not sure how he does.

“Hey, kiddo. Is there something you want me to call you?”

“My dad called me Sammie.”

“Do you want me to call you that?”

She thinks about it for a second, then shakes her head. “No—not if you don’t mind. You sound—you don’t know me.”

Jim nods. “Okay, fair enough. If you figure out what you want me to call you, let me know, okay?” She nods. “Now I want to talk to you about what you want to do. You said you can’t go back, and we’ll look into that, but I believe you. What that means, though, is that you need somewhere to stay. We should be able to find a Starfleet family who wants to take you, if you want—”

“I want to stay here.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods, fingers twisting together in her lap. “I’ve never spent longer than shore leave off this ship. It’s the only home I have. And I know it’s different, but I just lost everyone I know. I can’t lose my home, too.”

“Okay.” Jim sits back in his chair. “I’ll have to talk to the admiralty, and we’ll have to figure out what to do with you, but considering that you’re biologically ours, you should be able to stay.”

“On the old ship, I was a probationary science officer. Sa-mekh—I complete the science track training at fifteen, but due to my age the admiralty was reluctant to allow me the final title until I was at least seventeen.”

That would make everyone’s life infinitely easier, if she didn’t need schooling and nobody had to babysit her, though they couldn’t leave her alone immediately no matter what. “I’ll talk to the admiralty about that, too. But I need to make to make sure you know—fi you’re a science officer here, I’m not…I’m not your dad. I’m your captain.”

She nods, head ducked a little. “I know. On duty, you—dad was always captain first.” She smiles a little. “Sa-mekh had a harder time separating the two, if you’ll believe it.”

“Were we good parents?” Jim asks before he can think better of it, and her smile drops into something sadder.

“Dad and sa-mekh loved me more than anything, except maybe each other. I guess I always knew they would die in space—I just didn’t expect to have to watch it.” She shakes her head. “My fathers were the best parents I could ask for. And I’m not expecting you to be my dad. Just…don’t be mad if I forget, please?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Jim stares at her for a minute, at the tension in her shoulders and the wringing of her hands, then asks, “Are you a touch-telepath? Because if not, I want to give you a hug. You look like you need a hug.”

Her eyes widen, and they’re _his eyes_ , and that’s possibly the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in his life, his eyes on a face that’s a lot like Spock’s. “I am, but…but I’d like a hug anyway, if that’s okay.”

This will not stop being weird, but he likes kids, and he feels bad for her, so he stands and leans down to give her a hug. For a second she’s stiff in his arms, almost vibrating with tension, and then she lets out a soft gasp and surges forward, wrapping her arms around her with a grip that almost hurts. The momentum almost tips him over, and he has to lean over and brace himself on the bed so he doesn’t fall on the floor.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells her when she shows no sign of letting go. “You’re going to be okay.”

“You’re dead,” she sobs, and he realizes she’s actually crying against him, a wet spot spreading against the neck of his shirt. “You’re dead, Dad, and I don’t know what to do. You’re dead and my bond with sa-mekh is gone and my head is so empty, Dad.”

Jim freezes where he is, hand mid hopefully-comforting stroke down her back, because he has no idea what to do with this. “It’s okay,” he says finally, because he doesn’t know what else he _can_ say. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to finish this out. I promise.”

It takes her a second, and then she pulls back, wiping the tears from her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed green, and it takes him a second to realize that it’s a flush. “Sorry,” she says, ducking her head a little. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I’s okay.” Jim makes himself smile at her. “I’m human, kiddo, I’m perfectly fine with the occasional freak-out. Done one a time or two myself.”

She smiles back, a little shyly. She still looks exhausted and miserable, tears still leaking down her face. “Thanks. I’m better at emotion than sa-mekh was, and I don’t have the strict need for control that most Vulcans do, but I still tend to feel a bit stronger than humans. That’s, uh—you might not now this, I don’t know what…Commander Spock has told you, but that’s the great lie of the Vulcans, that they don’t feel anything. They feel too much. We feel too much. They shut it all down because back before they did that, back before Surak, they went around killing each other. So they shut it all down. Turned everything off. I don’t need to do that, but I—” She swallows, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

A nurse walks in with a tray of toast, and Sammie offers her a reflexive smile when she takes it. When the nurse is gone, Sammie says, “I know her. Knew her. Fifteen years older. She took care of me when I was sick as a baby.” She shakes her head. “It’s weird, is all. Guess I’ll have to get used to it.”

Jim’s not sure if he should ask about the future, so instead he says, “Why don’t you tell me about what you were interested in, if you don’t mind. Your latest project, maybe, before you left, or before people on the ship got sick.”

Her expression shutters for a second, then lights up, and then she starts talking about plants, and it’s the happiest he’s seen her since she smashed materialized with her face on his shoe, so he smiles back and lets her talk.

\--

“Jim.”

Jim looks over from watching Sammy pick at toast to see Bones standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. It’s the we-need-to-talk stance, which normally Jim would be all for at a time like this, but given that twenty minutes ago Sammy was crying on his shoulder like the world was ending, he’s a little hesitant to leave her. But before he can say anything, she says, “It’s fine, you can go.” She smiles a little. “I have toast to keep me company.”

“Okay.” Jim hesitates, hating how uncomfortable he feels around her—he’s good with kids normally, damn it—then stands, heading over to where Bones is. Bones turns and walks to his office, and Jim follows; neither of them say anything until the office door is closed.

At which point Bones bursts out, “Are you out of your space-loving mind?”

Jim drops down in the chair, burying his face in his hands for a second. “Probably. Why?”

“You’re seriously considering keeping a kid on this ship? Do you know what kind of dangers are in space? And we don’t have time to babysit her. I barely have time to babysit you, and you have to be here.”

At another time Jim would take offense to that, but right now he just leans his head back against the chair and stares at Bones. “She’s only a year younger than Chekov was on that first mission.”

“I still say he should never have been on that mission.”

“Well, he was, and he was fine. And she grew up on the Enterprise, apparently. She’s not going to need a babysitter.”

“It’s not safe. We have no idea how to treat her.”

“We’ll figure it out, just like we did with Spock.”

Bones eyes him for a second, then drops down in his own chair, only to pop up a second later and demand, “And what about you? I can’t imagine Spock being particularly paternal, so what, you’re just going to be her only parent?”

Jim squeezes the bridge of his nose, which does nothing to help get rid of her burgeoning headache. “I’m not going to be her parent. And Spock is…attached to her.”

“Ha. That hobgoblin, attached to anyone? That’ll be the day.”

“Bones—”

“I can’t even imagine what Vulcan parenting must look like. Ignoring your child until they learn it’s illogical to want love?”

“Bones—”

“And don’t use the excuse that he dated Uruha, because his idea of a romantic gesture was giving her a radioactive rock that he could use as a homing beacon, like she was some kind of pet that he needed to microchip.”

“He’s a hybrid.”

Bones stops. Blinks at him, mouth still open like he’s about to start ranting again on Spock’s inability to have emotional attachments to people. “Yes,” he says finally, like Jim is a particularly stupid two-year-old.

“Do you know what hybrids can’t have?”

Bones’s mouth opens a little wider, and then he gets it, slumping down in his chair. “Aw, hell.”

Jim nods. “She may be his only chance at having viable offspring. And when I said she grew up on the Enterprise—she said she’s never been planetside longer than shore leave, and given how our missions run, I’m guessing there wasn’t much shore leave. I don’t have any family she can live with, and unless you’re suggesting we ask Sarek to take her, there’s nobody for her to stay with on Vulcan. And I’m not going to kick her out of the only home she’s ever known to send her to some—some planet where she doesn’t know anyone, just because she’s inconvenient.”

Bones groans. “Shit. So you’re keeping her?”

Jim makes a face. “She’s staying on the ship.”

Bones still looks like this is not a conversation he wants to be a part of, or maybe like this is a conversation he doesn’t want Jim to be a part of. Those are similar expressions on Bones’s face. “Look, biologically she’s your kid, yours and the hobgoblin’s, and if she’s sixteen and grew up with both of you as her parents…you’re going to need to be her parents. You can just take a sixteen-year-old and tell her she’s an adult now. So…I’m not saying you need to be dad of the year, but you can’t just tell her to go fuck off and pretend you’re only her captain. It’s not going to work, and it’s not going to be good for her.”

Fuck. Bones is right, no matter how much Jim wants to pretend he’s not. “I have no idea how to be a dad.”

“You’d better figure it out,” Bones says ruthlessly, “because you agreed to keep her here, so she’s your problem now.”

\--

Jim finds Spock in his quarters, and it’s way too late but they’re both still awake, Jim because he’s oscillating between terror and…well, more terror too much for him to sleep, and Spock because he’s Spock.

He was clearly doing paperwork on his PADD before Jim knocked, because it’s sitting glowing on his desk, and Jim is pretty sure he doesn’t play games on it like Jim does on his. Unless he was talking to his dad. Which probably shouldn’t be as improbable an option as Jim feels like it is.

“Sorry,” Jim says, realizing that not only is it way too late, it’s the ass-end of way too late, and if Spock’s still doing paperwork this late he’s going to get even less sleep than usual—not that Jim knows anything about his sleeping habits, really, other than ‘not much’—and he doesn’t need Jim bothering him.

But Spock shakes his head, taking a few steps into his room and standing at Vulcan half-attention, not quite relaxed but not so rigid it looks like there’s a stick up his ass. “Apologies are unnecessary, Captain. What can I do for you?”

Jim takes a couple steps in after him so he can close the door behind him. “I figured we should talk about what we’re going to do about…her. She said she wants to stay and be a science officer, and I called the Admiralty”—and hadn’t that been an awkward conversation—“and they said she has to take some qualifying tests so they can make sure she’s actually qualified to do that, but seeing as there’s not really a better option than keeping her here, and we have first say because we’re her biological parents, she’s theoretically going to stay, at least for the time being. So we need to figure out how to deal with that.”

Spock inclines his head slightly, then gestures towards his PADD. “I was in the process of filling out the paperwork to request that she be provided with Vulcan citizenship. I believe that, should something happen to the two of us, Vulcan citizenship would ensure that she be taken care of.”

Jim blinks at him. “Based on what you said before, I wouldn’t have thought they would give someone who’s not fully Vulcan citizenship.” He makes a face. “I mean someone who wasn’t born on Vulcan.”

“There is not a history of interspecies breeding by Vulcans,” Spock says, and wow, Jim doesn’t know if he would be able to say something like that about himself with a straight face. “As such, the citizenship standard of jus sanguinis is such that, as long as one has a biological parent who is Vulcan, the child is considered Vulcan.”

“But you’re—”

“Culturally,” Spock says, and his voice sharpens just a touch, “I may not always be considered Vulcan, but by legal standards, as I have just stated, I am considered as such. There was never a prior legal need to make the distinction between those born from one Vulcan parent and those born from two Vulcan parents, so the distinction was not made. Something which, in this case, will work to our advantage.”

Huh. That actually makes sense, though it’s a little sad that the excuse for not being even more legally xenophobic is ‘we didn’t think of it before’. Either way, that seems like a good thing for them. “Great,” he says brightly, “so she’ll be Vulcan. At least that gives us a contingency plan, even if I’m not planning on dying any time soon.”

The sharp edge in Spock’s expression smooths back out, and he nods. “I am not, either. However, additionally, Vulcan citizenship will also allow her access to resources available on New Vulcan, if necessary.” He hesitates, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. “For that reason, and because you are the biological parent of one who will imminently be a Vulcan citizen, I would also apply for citizenship for you, if you would consent to it. I am unsure as to whether it would be approved, as there is little precedent for childbearing without bonding and so the jus matrimonii laws are unclear in this case, but there can be no harm in applying.”

That’s not at all what he had expected Spock to say. “You want me to be a Vulcan?”

“In citizenship only,” Spock says.

Jim thinks about it for a second, but he’s never had a particularly strong patriotic attachment to Earth—he loves the planet, but he’s never felt the need to be Terran rather than just human—so he nods. “Sure. What the hell.”

“Should I take that to mean I have your consent?”

“Yeah.”

Spock inclines his head. “I will complete the paperwork after I am finished doing so for…the other paperwork.”

Right. That little chestnut. “I’m not really sure what we’re supposed to call her. She said she goes by Sammy, but she didn’t want me calling her that right now, and I’m guessing she wouldn’t want you calling her that either. But I’m not sure what that leaves us with. Amanda?”

Spock looks like he actually flinches at that, his entire body stiffening. “Amanda was my mother’s name.”

Oh. Shit. “Okay, maybe Amanda’s out. She doesn’t have a rank so we can’t call her that, I’m not calling her Kirk because that’s a little too weird, and there’s no way I would be able to pronounce the rest of her name.”

“S'chn T'gai,” Spock supplies, which doesn’t help at all, because there’s no way Jim’s going to be able to get his tongue around that any time soon. “I too am unsure as to how to address or refer to her.”

Jim grimaces. “For right now, we might need to stick to call her ‘her’, which is nowhere near ideal, but I’m not sure what our other option is. And…Bones said, and he’s right, that we can’t just treat her like she’s not related to us. It’s not fair to her, and it wouldn’t be right. I can’t order you to do this, but—”

Spock’s expression is doing something hard and weird that Jim can’t read, and he sounds stiff when he says, “She is my responsibility as well.”

Jim blinks at him. “What?”

“You seem to be operating under the assumption that she is solely, or at least primarily, your responsibility. I am unsure if this is because you are the Captain or because you are human and believe that, as I am Vulcan, I would not claim responsibility for a child, but regardless of the reason, you are mistaken. She is equally mine as she is yours, and I will not be remiss in my duties to her.”

“Oh.” Jim knows he should say something else along with that, like ‘thanks’ or ‘wow you really want this kid’, but what eventually comes out is, “Sorry.”

“Apologies are unnecessary. Now, Captain, unless you have any further questions that require my immediate attention, I believe we both would benefit from rest.”

Shit, right, the time. “Yeah, sure, I’ll leave you alone. And, uh, thanks Spock.”

Spock gives him a flat look. “Gratitude is unnecessary.”

Right. Cool. Jim nods, then heads out of the room. Wow, he needs sleep.

\--

They secure a meeting room for a meeting with all senior staff members the next day, which is a bit unorthodox, but they’re at least four days from the nearest inhabited planet, so he’s not too worried about them all being off the bridge at the same time for half an hour or so.

He waits until they’re all settled in and quiet—with Bones still in the infirmary because he knows what’s going on and Spock standing in the corner because he’s Spock—before saying, “As I’m sure you’re all aware by now, a Vulcan girl appeared on the beaming pad at the same time as us a couple days ago. We’ve kept the information about her need-to-know until now, but at this point I’m going to brief you on what’s going on.”

“Finally,” Scotty mutters, but quietly enough Jim can ignore him.

“As some of you may have heard rumors of, she is not fully Vulcan.”

Uhura’s eyes, unsurprisingly, go to Spock. “How is that possible?”

Kirk starts to say something about genetics or alternate universes or something, but Spock is apparently fed up with the delay, because he says, “S'chn T'gai Amanda Samantha Kirk is the biological daughter of myself and Captain Kirk.”

Sulu chokes on air, which would be funnier if it weren’t for the absolutely devastated look on Uhura’s face. “She—”

“She’s from an alternate universe,” Jim says, mostly to get that disaster of a post-relationship mess as far out of the way as possible. “We’re not sure at the moment how she ended up in this one, but she did, and she’s here to stay, because we have no idea how to send her back, and even if we did, she can’t go back.”

Uhura focuses on him now, which is probably better than her focusing on Spock at the moment. They can hash out whatever needs to be hashed out and he won’t stop them, but he’s not going to deal with it in the middle of his meeting. “Why not?”

“Apparently the entire crew got sick, and they caught it too late and now most of them are dead with the ship stranded in space. We—uh, her parents, they died. So anyway, she’s here now.”

“She’s going to stay on the Enterprise?” Sulu asks.

Jim nods. “There’s nowhere else for her to go, and apparently she was basically a science officer in her world. She’s going to take some tests set by the admiralty, but assuming she passes those she’ll be basically a junior science officer here for the foreseeable future. Now I’ll introduce you to her later, probably today if Bones clears her. And she’s a touch telepath, so at least until we know her limits, treat her the way you would treat any other Vulcan you’re not familiar with.”

“I recommend we limit her exposure to others,” Spock says, and Jim almost jumps out of his skin because he hadn’t been expecting him to talk. “I am unsure of her emotional control, but as all familial bonds are recently broken, she is likely having trouble regulating her emotions. This problem would be exacerbated by a large number of unshielded minds.”

So the mess hall is out then. That had been Jim’s initial plan, but he’ll have to figure out something else. “Is there something we can do to help with that?”

Spock looks at him. “The simplest fix would be for me to form a parental bond with her.”

“That’s—okay, we can talk about that later.” He looks back out at the senior staff. “Any questions?”

“Yeah.” Sulu grins at them. “How’d the two of you have a kid?”

“I’m not sure, actually. Not that it was us, but—”

“You may ask her when you meet her,” Spock says. “I suspect her birth is a story that she is familiar with.”

“Right. And are you two her parents now?”

Jim feels his expression harden, and he actively work to tamp down on his rising temper. “No. And don’t bring that up to her.”

The grin falters a bit, and Sulu gives him an apologetic, “Alright.”

Jim scrapes his hand across his face. He doesn’t want to be snapping at his friends, damn it. “She just lost her actual parents, and Spock and I are pale replacements at best. No offense, Spock.”

“No offense taken, Captain.”

“Great.” Jim turns back towards the group. “I know this is a weird situation, and I’m not asking any of you to befriend her or anything, but she will likely be a crew member starting soon, so don’t make it weird. Please.”

\--

Jim would introduce Sammie to Uhura first, but she and Spock are being…something, so he goes with Sulu, who’s normal enough, relatively inoffensive, and doesn’t outwardly project too much. At least not to Jim’s standards which, he would be the first to admit, are probably not the best to go off of at the moment. But Spock doesn’t argue, so he figures that’s as good as he’s going to get.

Sulu’s doing something in one of the botany labs when Jim shows up with Sammie in tow, and he looks up and gives them a smile as he finishes petting his plant. “Captain.”

“Sulu, this is, uh—”

“Sammie,” Sammie says, and honest to God smiles, wider than Jim had seen out of her since she had arrived. “How’s Demora?” Surprise crosses Sulu’s face, and the smile drops from Sammie’s. “Oh. Is she not around either?”

“She is,” Sulu specifies, clearly scrambling a little to figure out what to say. “Or, rather, she’s planetside with Ben, my husband. Her father. Do you—did you know her?”

“We’re friends.” Sammie chews on her lip, then says, “She’s older than me—she was older than me—but not many crewmembers had kids, and there was nobody even close to my age around. We commed a lot, when we could.” She smiles a little again, hesitantly. “She’s around, then? She must be little, I guess. Maybe I can be the older friend this time, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” He smiles, and it doesn’t even look forced. He was definitely the right choice, even if that was an uncomfortable start. “Maybe you can convince her that working on the Enterprise really is the coolest job in the universe.”

Sammie laughs. “She didn’t believe that in my time, either, so I don’t know if I’ll have much luck there.”

“Maybe if you start early.”

“Maybe.” Sammie shoves her hands in her pockets, then looks at his plant and asks, “Is that from Vulcan?”

“They had plants on Vulcan?” Jim blurts out, and both of them give him a condescending yet indulgent look. It’s a little unnerving, actually.

Sulu says, “Yes, Captain, they had plants on Vulcan,” before looking at Sammie and telling her, “It is. They’ve been having trouble growing some of their native plants on New Vulcan because of differences in soil content, so most Federation botany labs are working on at least a couple.”

“That’s—” Amanda says, then stops, frowning. “New Vulcan?”

Jim freezes. He hadn’t thought of that, but if she was from an alternate universe, it would have been one where Nero hadn’t showed up and Vulcan had never been killed. Unless the divergence had been after the destruction of Vulcan. “There was an attack on Vulcan a number of years ago, and the planet was destroyed. The population was relocated to a planet they named New Vulcan.”

“Oh.” She doesn’t look devastated, at least not from his eyes, so Vulcan didn’t exist anymore in her universe either. He hopes. “Weird. Where I’m from…it probably can’t hurt to tell you this. Where I’m from, the survivors mostly settled in the Sahara Desert and Death Valley, on Earth. There weren’t enough of them for them to settle on an entire planet.” She grins a little, apparently remembering something. “They never said it, but we’re pretty sure they wanted to be closer to where Dad was from because he avenged them, and they’re all vengeful bloodthirsty people underneath and didn’t really grasp the idea that the Sahara Dessert was nowhere near Iowa, and that Dad was born in space, anyway.” A frown crosses her face. “Maybe that’s why I wasn’t born here. I mean, not the only reason, but maybe that’s where the divergence started.”

“Speaking of that,” Sulu says, a gleam in his eyes, “how were you born? Space isn’t usually the ideal place to grow children.”

“Dad and sa-mekh saved a planet,” Sammie starts, with a voice like she’s retelling a story she’s heard a hundred times, “and so the people decided to give them their greatest wish as a reward. Of course, a kid wasn’t their greatest wish, and they didn’t realize that Dad’s genetics and sa-mekh’s weren’t actually compatible, but they had a historic of children dying young, so for them, a child was everyone’s greatest wish. So in the feast in Dad and sa-mekh’s honor, they handed them screaming little me, who they had grown the day before, and sent them on their way.” She shrugs. “And that’s how I was born. Grown in a lab in a day on a planet of people who thought my parents really wanted a kid. Sa-mekh almost had a heart attack, but he got over it. And then I had my first allergic reaction and he apparently wouldn’t put me down for twelve hours, while Dad just shrugged and said when I was older he was going to have me lick tools and such to build up my immunity.”

Sulu clearly wants to make a joke to Kirk about that, but he holds his tongue, which Kirk appreciates. He doesn’t want to break her good mood for as long as possible.

After a second, she shakes herself out of her reminiscing, saying, “So that’s how I was born. Can I take a look at the plant?”

Sulu looks at Kirk for confirmation, and after his nod Sulu says, “Sure, why not. Maybe you’ll have some idea why it keeps wilting every time I touch it for too long.”

She heads over towards the plant, eyes fixed on it, and Kirk says, “I’ll leave you to it, then. Com me if you need anything.”

Sammie already doesn’t seem to be listening, eyes fixed on the readouts from the computer, so Sulu nods to him, then turns back to his plant.

Jim watches them for another moment, then heads out of the room. He still has Spock to talk to.

\--

Spock is doing paperwork in his office when Jim finds him, and he looks up and gives Jim a small nod. “Captain.”

“Commander.” Jim sits down in the other chair in the office, resting his hands on his heads. “So. We have a kid.”

“Indeed.”

“Yeah.”

Spock stares at him for another minute, then asks, “Is there something I can do for you, Captain?”

“Right.” Jim straightens out in the chair, pulling a little bit of the Captain hat back on. “You mentioned a familial bond. How exactly does that work? Is it some sort of Vulcan genetic thing?”

Spock doesn’t answer for a long time, and about halfway into that awkward silence Jim is reminded of just how damn closed-mouthed Vulcans are about their culture. And he’s going to offer to not make Spock talk about it, even though Spock was the one who brought it up in the first place. But then Spock says, “I must admit to struggling with the means of articulating this in Standard. There are words in Vulcan that do not translate with sufficient precision and nuance into Standard. However, I will attempt it. Vulcans form telepathic bonds with their betrothed at a young age. However, there are additional bonds with their parents that provide emotional, telepathic, and empathetic stability, particularly before they are able to control those on their own. Even for one with control, losing those bonds can be destabilizing. I am unsure as to whether she had a betrothed, but she would have had familial bonds with both of her parents.”

“She said her head feels empty.”

Spock inclines his head slightly. “It would.”

Something in his voice strikes Jim, and he has an unpleasant thought. “Wait, did you have a fiancée? And—and did you have a bond with your mom? She was human.”

“I did.”

“And they both—”

“Yes.”

Shit. “I—I grieve with thee.” That’s how the Vulcan’s say it, Jim knows. It’s been years since he’s studied Vulcan, so he has no idea how to say it properly, but in this case he thinks it’s the thought that counts.

Spock tilts his head down, like a nod without picking his head back up once he’s done. “I am currently unclear as to the extent of her control,” he says like the previous conversation never took place, “but I believe that her emotional control and mental state would be aided by myself or both us forming a familial bond with her, should she give permission for such a thing. The locations in her mind where those bonds were should still be open, and so the formation of the bond should be non-traumatic on both ends.”

“Okay.”

“If you are uncomfortable with the formation of such a bond, I am willing to do so without you. As my mind is also Vulcan, I will be able to provide a stronger connection and higher degree of telepathic feedback.”

“I said okay, Spock. I’ll do it.” If it’s not going to do any damage and it’ll help her, he can’t see a reason not to.

“All of this, of course, is contingent on receiving her consent.”

“Of course.” Jim stands. “Let’s go bond ourselves to our kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy stories about accidental child acquisition/secret relatives, so...yeah.


End file.
